Strib's Take On the Filibuster Deal: Ultra-Liberal

(H/T: Anti-Strib)

The Star Tribune (riduculed nationally for having all of its polls consistently 10% track to the left of the all other polls) has made it official. They love the filibuster deal which means that is sucks for the country, sucks for Republicans and is good only for ultra-liberal hacks...like the Strib's editorial board.

Here is the link to it.

Where we start for the critique is at the end of their pap.

In their anger at the compromise, some asserted that, for Democrats, any Republican judicial nominee was an "extraordinary circumstance." That's silly; more than 200 Bush nominees, most of them Republicans, have been confirmed by the Senate; only 10 were blocked.

Uh, nice job of trying to minimize the true deed of the Senate Dems. As readers here may recall I already pointed out the misleading nature of the 'only 10 of 200' talking point.

1) Most of those preside over trials and do not do Constitutional Review. Huge difference between a judge that sits over murder or drug cases (no need to block conservatives there, really) versus a judge that rules on appeals like they do in Appeals Courts and the Supreme Court.

2) Of the 51 nominated for Appeals Courts there have 45 to make it out of Committee...Of those 45, 22% have been blocked with a filibuster. That's right, almost a quarter of the nominees have been block by a filibuster.

3) ...In other words, these 10 nominees are the first in history to be filibustered by opponents.

Did I put the Media Bias logo up already? Maybe I should put two of them on this post.

OK, let's move to the beginning of their liberal mantra.

"There's something for everyone to love and hate in the compromise that preserved the filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Overall, the Democrats should be the most relieved"

Just as I have been saying as have many other spine-owning non-liberals: the filibuster deal helped only the Democrats. These stalemates in any legislative body are a zero-sum game. What one side wins the other side loses.

In the deal the Dems lose a little (3 nominees guaranteed to have an up/down vote) and gain a lot (the actual ability to again use the filibuster to block judicial nominees like never before done AND the addition of the PR advantage of blaming the GOP for breaking the agreement down the road).

In the deal the GOP gain a little (3 qualified nominees get the chance to be confirmed without their ideology being used improperly against them) and lose a lot (the PR game when the Dems again block minority nominees or non-liberal nominees, frame them as extraordinary circumstances and claim the GOP reneged on this week's deal; they get no guarantee that all nominees will get an advise & consent vote for confirmation as required by the Constitution; the status quo that they entrenched themselves to undo remains).

The Marxist Strib Editors continue:

Many Democrats and their liberal supporters are upset at this compromise. But they should review the facts: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, with only 44 members in his caucus, had assembled 49 votes to stop Majority Leader Bill Frist's rule-breaking attempt to outlaw continue the practice of not having judicial filibusters. Reid didn't know if he could get the additional two votes he needed. If Reid had taken the gamble and lost, President Bush could have nominated even more extreme radicals non-liberals to the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, without concerning himself about Democratic opposition with the expectation that the Constitutional requirement of advise & consent is performed, which would be as it always has been: majority rule. This way, Democrats retain their ability to defeat the worst extremists minorities or non-ultra liberals that are nominated.

Strikthroughs obviously are mine, but they are necessary to provide accuracy...something the MSM is not reliably producing.

Seriously, when did Michael Moore start running the editorial board at the Strib?

Look at that last quote, btw. Notice that they acknowledge that the Dems will filibuster in the future. The whole showdown is because there was never before a filibuster on judicial nominees by opponents of the nominees. History and tradition are only words that flow falsely from the Democrats. Their filibuster and the Strib's support this year of such filibusters are contrary to history and tradition.

Their inane bias continues.

This is why the fringe fundamentalists¹ are so incensed at the compromise. It means, as one wag said, that James Dobson of Focus on the Family won't get to name the next Supreme Court justice². And thank goodness for that. The radical Dobson and friends, and those in the Senate eager to do their bidding, went for broke on this, and they lost³. They sought absolute power restoring majority rule to do whatever they wanted, and seven Republican senators who care about the special character of their chamber wanted the power to impose their minority will said, "No we want 14% of the Senate to hold majority power instead of 50%." We note that Sen. Norm Coleman was not among them. He sided unequivocally with Dobson and his ultraconservative, sectarian fellow travelers¹.

The superscript numbers are what I want to point out here.
1. I'm not a fringe fundalmentalist. I am not one of Dobson's "sectarian fellow travelers". In fact, I am of no religion per se, I never have made a "sectarian" arguements, I am not a part of the Religious Right in any manner. It simply happens that because certain things may be universal truths my secular beliefs come to the same conclusions as sectarian conclusions. I do not appreciate the "open-minded" and "diversity seeking" leftists lumping me into such pigeonholes as "Religious Right" or "sectarian". It is no more fair for the Strib to make that comment as it is for me to say that all Democrats are homosexuals since they all are for gay marriage. Bastard hypocrites.
2. Here it is...unless the nominee is of like mind of the left then they should not be approved. In the left's America the people who agree with Focus on the Family should not be allowed to have representation in the judiciary. Actually, in America as the left wants it people who disagree with the left should not have a voice in the Executive or Judicial branches EVER.
3. See, here they finally admit that the deal was a victory for the Dems, not for the Senate on whole. I am vindicated from the left's claim that critics of the compromise don't understand the compromise.

They do not truly support Free Speech. They do not support Representation for those who do not agree with them. They do not have an intellectually honest position on these issues.

That is one of the fundamental issues with the left and their mouthpiece: the Main Stream Media.